The Wikimedia Foundation language committee is in charge of developing a clear policy and documentation for new language projects and their proposal, processing those requests, and supporting and coordinating new projects to optimize their success.

The Language Committee mainly acts in the Requests for new languages process by reviewing the requests, giving advice and eventually recommending the creation of new language versions to the Board. Individual Langcom members also take care of the proposals for closing projects. If you have any questions (for example about the possible requesting of a new language version), please direct these to the talk page or directly to any member.

a clear step-by-step policy (based on quantitative indicators) for evaluating the feasibility of new language wikis, with an automated procedure for project development;

support and policy development for script and localization related problems;

documentation to support new language communities towards a stable growth rate;

support and coordination for cross-language projects, helping smaller communities share resources and maximize their results;

support and coordination to maintain compatibility among the different MediaWiki installations, in order to reduce the amount of development needed to upgrade the program base as far as localization is concerned.

The processing of requests for new language subdomains of existing Wikimedia projects, providing it gives the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees four days advance notice before approving a request.

Anyone can follow the discussions of the language committee by subscribing to the public mailing list langcom at lists.wikimedia.org, on which the internal proceedings are made. Non-members should generally not participate in discussions. When it is necessary however, they can send a mail which a list administrator will need to accept manually.

Prior to April 2013, the discussions happened on a private mailing list. From June 2011 to April 2013, members of the community could ask to become "langcom observers". They then received copies of the e-mails sent to the internal committee mailing list.